Here's To You
by Motorchickensmile
Summary: The year - 1948. The place - Arcadia City, USA. The man - Raghnall Clarence O'Reilly . . . better known by his friends as Ralph . . . better known by his coworkers at the Niceland Construction Co. as Wreck-It Ralph. One fateful decision - and his life is about to change forever. The story of Wreck-It Ralph, told in an Alternate Universe. Rated T for alcohol and tobacco consumption.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: **WELP. WELP. HERE WE ARE AGAIN, GUYS.

What a complete idiot I was to think that my Wreck-It Ralph mania had subsided forever. What. An. Idiot.

This story is pretty different for me for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it's an AU, which I've never actually taken a serious crack at writing before. Secondly, I am making A SEVERE, DELIBERATE ATTEMPT at writing shorter chapters, and not letting it get freakishly long and out of hand. Thirdly . . . and I can't stress this enough . . . this is straight up a _strictly-for-funsies _fanfiction, which I really wanted to write, but am determined not to let get in the way of more serious projects. To wit, I am not going to impose any kind of update schedule on myself. I'll try to get new chapters written when I can, but I just want to let you know at the outset that I can make no promises about their regularity.

All that being said . . . it's great to be back! I hope you guys like this one, and that the AU isn't too jarring or confusing . . . please let me know what you think! I tried to exposit some of the tenets of the AU as naturally as possible in this chapter ( and there will be more in the coming chapters ), but if you have any questions or confusion, ask away and I'll be happy to answer!

**Disclaimer: **All copyrighted characters are the property of Disney.

_**Here's To You**_

_Chapter 1: Prologue_

_'Nov. 3, 1948._

_My name is Ralph O'Rei - '_

He paused suddenly, the tip of his pencil hovering over the first line of messy scrawl on the page. He frowned down at the words for a moment, then turned his pencil around - somewhat clumsily - and erased what he had written. He blew away the crumbs, hunched down lower over the yellow legal pad, and began again.

_'My real name is Raghnall Clarence O'Reilly . . . but everyone has always called me Ralph._

_I am a demolitions man working for the - '_

He paused again, scrunching one half of his face in frustration and breathing a sharp exhale through his nostrils. This was already turning out to be more difficult than he'd anticipated. He erased most of the second line, and replaced it with a single word.

_'I am a __**wrecker**__.'_

He found himself unconsciously pressing the tip of the pencil down harder and harder as he went, etching the letters darker and deeper into the paper.

_'Matter of fact, I lied. Nobody around here calls me Ralph . . . they call me WRECK-IT Ralph. Cute little nickname for me. Why? Because I __**wreck things. Professionally. That's really the only honest way I can think of putting it. The company gives me a title and a desk and tries to pretend like my job is important but really it's all just a big LOAD OF '**_

SNAP!

Ralph flinched as the pencil lead abruptly broke under the increasing pressure of his hand, and he realized he had been gritting his teeth and muttering to himself. He glanced furtively around to see if anyone had noticed.

They had not. In fact, none of his coworkers in the slick, chrome-and-linoleum lunchroom of the Niceland Construction Company were sitting anywhere near him . . . it was as if they had all purposefully chosen seats as far away from him as possible, and were even avoiding direct eye contact. Unsurprised, Ralph lowered his brow in a jaded frown, fished his only spare pencil from the breast pocket of his work jacket, and turned back down to his notepad. He took a few slow breaths and tried to write as calmly as possible.

_'I'm a wrecker. I work in the demolitions department of the Niceland Construction Co. in Arcadia City, Pennsylvania.'_

He thought for a second, then added;

'. . . _but really, I guess you could say I __**am **__the demolitions department of the Niceland Construction Co. Would they have given __**me**__ an office if there was anyone else at all they could have given it to?'_

Ralph stopped writing and read the sentence silently back to himself, then frowned. It sounded awfully bitter. He leaned one elbow on the lunchroom table and let his chin rest in his palm for a moment, tapping the pencil eraser absently on the page as he thought.

How did Zangief put it the other day? The truth about himself, but . . . with a positive outlook? Glass-half-full kinda stuff?

_'I have a - '_

He began a new sentence, then hesitated again, wracking his brain for a way to put a positive spin on _anything_ about himself that was also true.

_'I have a . . . passionate temperament, you could say. Yeah, passionate is a nice word for it._

_. . . what else?'_

He paused. What else? What else indeed. He pondered fruitlessly for a moment, then gave up and aimlessly began writing down whatever popped into his head.

_'I live alone in a basement apartment on the east side of town. It's a small place. One window. My sink's been broken for a week. I think the super is avoiding me. _

_I'm nine feet tall. I weigh six hundred and forty-three pounds. I have to have my shoes custom made at the leather mill. I had to provide my own jacket for work because the biggest size the company carries is an 18. I'm not allowed to ride city buses unless I can sit over the axles. I had to have the face of my wrist watch reattached to a __**belt**__ just so I could fit it around my - '_

Ralph stopped suddenly, realizing with an exasperated sigh that he was slipping back into another stream of complaints. He rubbed his face once with his hand and tried to start over on a different topic.

_'Anyway . . . my pal Zangief suggested I start keeping a journal, said it helped him sort through some of his problems, thought it might help me with mine . . . not so sure about it myself, but guess I'm almost willing to try anything at this point, so . . . here I am._

_What else?_

_. . . I was born in Dalkey, near Dublin, 1917 . . . dad died when I was four, ma brought us over here to the States when I was seven . . . died when I was fifteen . . . was about that time I started getting mixed up with the B - '_

Before he realized what he was writing, the tip of his pencil had formed the first letter of the name he hadn't been willing to utter aloud - even to himself - for the past seven years. Ralph stopped suddenly, his heart giving a stiff thump against his chest as if to remind himself to be more careful. He erased the last few words of the sentence and kept going, his mouth a bit drier than it had been before.

' . . . _was about that time I started getting around on my own. Got the demolitions job from old Merrycab Sr. about the time I was twenty-four_ . . . _little old nut said he saw "potential" in me . . . still think he was just trying to save money on staff and equipment. With me on the job, he didn't need anybody else, didn't even need updated machinery. Have to admit, though . . . much as I hate it, it's probably the only kind of work I'll ever be able to get in this town. Suppose I should be grateful.'_

Ralph paused, glancing down again at the insubstantial pencil gripped clumsily in his enormous fingers. It - like almost everything else he owned, everything else in the _world_ - had not been made with someone of his unusual proportions in mind. He let out a heavy, melancholic sigh, but forced himself to keep writing.

_'When I was born, Dalkey was so small that I was the only Character in the whole village. Ma always said that once we got to America, things would be different, especially in a big city like Arcadia. Said there would be so many Characters here, nobody would think twice about me, even if I was bigger than everybody else. Well . . . she was right, and wrong. There may be a heck of a lot of Characters in this city . . . people with every crazy kind of looks and powers you can think of . . . but I still manage to stick out in a crowd like a nine-foot sore thumb. Kinda glad she didn't live long enough to see me when I'd finished growing . . . she was __**sure**__ by the time I hit seven and nine inches in high school I __**had**__ to be finished. Heh. What wouldn't I trade to be seven nine again now, Ma . . . '_

"Heeeyy . . . look who it is, boys! Our fearless leader!" a loud voice - which Ralph immediately recognized as belonging to one of his most ardent nemeses, Gene Reynolds from accounting - suddenly called out a few tables away, and was buttressed by a responding chorus of laughter and gaiety from the others. Ralph reflexively glanced up from his writing, but his expression darkened instantly into a flat scowl when he saw who was causing the commotion.

Wishing bitterly that he'd gone _out_ to lunch that day, rainstorm or no rainstorm, Ralph hunched back down over his notepad and tried to look as if he wasn't interested in the social goings-on of the other.

_'Felix Merrycab Jr.', _he wrote plainly at the top of the next page, intentionally keeping his eyes averted as the short, tidy figure of his boss, dressed in casual business attire, strolled into the cafeteria and was greeted enthusiastically by his coworkers. _'Old Merrycab Sr.'s kid. "Fix-It Felix," they all call him. Guarantee you __**he**__ never eats lunch alone. Everybody thinks he's such a swell guy, eating down here in the galley with the rest of us poor working slobs, even though he's President of the company_ . . . _sure, I'd come down here every day too, if all everybody did was pat __**me**__ on the back and laugh at __**my**__ rotten jokes and sucker up to __**me**__ like a bunch of - '_

"Well, well . . . if this isn't a dandy surprise!"

SNAP!

Ralph let out a startled yelp, jumping three inches into the air and breaking the lead on his pencil again as a bright, cheerful voice unexpectedly piped up beside him. He looked up, and nearly had to pick his jaw back up when he saw none other than Felix himself, standing next to his chair and smiling straight at him. Even when Ralph was sitting down, the President and chief foreman of the Niceland Construction company barely came up to his shoulders. Even in a city that was full of people born with unusual, sometimes downright bizarre physiognomies - like himself - he was one of the most diminutive men Ralph had ever seen. It made the rare, already stilted interactions between them even more uncomfortable.

Evidently unfazed by his alarmed countenance, Felix's friendly smile didn't so much as flicker as he rapped his knuckles once on the tabletop next to Ralph's lunch plate and let out a good-natured chuckle.

"Don't remember the last time we saw you eating down _here_, Ralph! Ha, guess it's no wonder you're here today, though . . . how about this lousy _weather!_ I had to cancel a lunch meeting over at Sonic Transportation just because I forgot my umbrella this morning!"

Gene, Lucy, Mary, and a handful of other secretaries from accounting seated at their nearby table laughed uproariously at the joke.

"You sure are a _gas, _boss!" Gene cackled delightedly, then instantly shifted gears and shot a nasty, sidelong glance toward Ralph.

Felix shook his head and waved them off. "But listen to me, going on! . . . how have _you _been, Ralph? You're doing great work this quarter, buddy . . . and with all the building tear-downs we had this summer! I'm amazed you've been able to keep up with it all . . . and that you've still got any _skin _left on your knuckles!"

The peanut gallery squawked with hilarity again, but Ralph scarcely heard them. His mouth was hovering open, his stomach knotting awkwardly as he struggled to come up with a response.

"Oh . . . ah . . . y-_yeah, _lot of . . . lot of big jobs this season . . . lot of . . . knuckle skin . . . yeah."

Ralph cleared his throat with embarrassment, wishing his chair could fall through a hole in the floor. It was so seldom that anyone at work even attempted to engage him in social conversation, he had all but forgotten how to even go about it.

Either oblivious to, or politely ignoring his flustered stupefaction, Felix just stood there smiling and nodding as if they were old friends and Ralph had said something profoundly interesting. After an agonizingly long pause, he finally slapped the table with his palm to signify the end of the exchange, and to Ralph's relief, began inching away from the table.

"Heh, ah . . . sure enough, brother, sure enough . . . well, let's just hope we can keep it up through the off-season, eh?" he grinned pleasantly. "You take it easy there, Ralph! Don't work yourself too . . . hard?"

Then . . . to Ralph's horror . . . Felix paused suddenly in mid-sentence, leaning over curiously as the yellow notepad sitting on the table caught his eye. A look of pleasant intrigue crossed his face, and - perhaps unconsciously - he half reached out his arm toward the paper.

"Say . . . what's that you're workin' on, there, brother?"

Ralph's eyes bugged. Panic seized him.

"NOTHING!" Ralph all but shouted, frantically slamming his forearms down around the notepad with such gusto that his elbow slammed into the mug sitting beside his untouched lunch, knocking it over and sending a splash of lukewarm black coffee all over the front of Felix's white, button-down shirt.

The President of the Niceland corporation let out a perfunctory yelp of alarm and staggered back from the table, holding his arms out and looking with dismay down at his ruined shirt-front, coffee dripping onto his polished shoes from the end of his royal blue necktie. Ralph sat frozen in place, a mortified pulse of heat rising up around his jaw. The entire lunchroom had suddenly gone quiet, an audience of startled and amused eyes staring at them from every surrounding table.

After a few awful, humiliating seconds, the first voice to break the silence was Gene.

"Slick move, you big _lummox!" _he sneered, hurrying toward Felix with a fistful of paper napkins. "Why don't watch where you're swinging those things? This isn't one of your _demolition _sites, you know!"

"Now, _now . . . _it was just an accident!" Felix insisted, dabbing uncomfortably at his shirt as no fewer than three of the women from accounting all flocked emphatically to his side, chattering invariably about club soda.

"Didn't look like an accident to _me_," Gene muttered provokingly under his breath, shooting Ralph a venomous look that snapped him out of his humiliated trance. His face darkening into a scowl, Ralph angrily opened his mouth and shoved his seat back from the table, preparing to bolt menacingly to his feet and snap back with a cutting remark of his own . . . only to bug his eyes out wordlessly instead as the air was rent by a sharp, violent _CRACK_. Both of the chair's back legs broke suddenly under his weight, and he went toppling backwards onto the floor with a heavy, clattering THUD.

The lunchroom exploded into raucous laughter.

Ralph blinked up at the ceiling for a few seconds, paralyzed with embarrassment. His face reddening, he sheepishly clambered to his feet amidst a chorus of whooping catcalls from every corner of the cafeteria.

"Hey, _Wreck-It _. . . Gibraltar called! They say their _rock is missing!"_

"That the same accident that kept you outta the _war, _Wreck-It?"

"Remind me never to get in the elevator with that guy!"

"No wonder you're so good at your job, Wreck-It . . . all you need to do to make a building collapse is _sit down _on the top floor!"

Ralph didn't so much as glance up at any of the hecklers. His brow narrowed into a hard, dark line - a line already hardened and darkened long before by years of learned, calloused indifference - he seized his notepad, grabbed his hat from the other side of the table, and jammed it down over his brow as he stormed angrily away.

"Ralph, _wait . . ." _

He thought, for a brief moment, that he heard Felix's placating voice struggling to reach him over the din of laughter echoing off the walls . . . but it was too late. He had already lumbered out of the room without looking back, the continuous jeering of his coworkers fading gradually out of reach of his hearing . . . but not out of reach of his heart.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

"Man alive, boss! What _nerve _on that oversized ape, huh?" Gene Reynolds from accounting muttered sanctimoniously. He voraciously continued to apply paper napkins to the front of Felix's shirt as the laughing uproar in the lunchroom had died back down to normal.

Felix rolled his eyes discretely and eased his self-appointed sympathizer's hands away as politely as possible - the shirt was long past saving, anyway.

"Now, _Gene _. . . come on, you _know _it was just an accident. Why does everybody have to give that poor guy such a hard time?"

"'_Poor guy!?'" _the round, dark-haired, mustachioed accountant sputtered incredulously in reply. "_Wreck-It _Ralph O'Reilly, a _poor guy? _Listen, boss . . . maybe you just don't _see _as much of him as we do, working on the top floor and all . . . but believe me, if anybody in this place _deserves _a hard time now and again, it's _O'Reilly! _You never _saw _such an uncouth, inconsiderate grouch around the office . . . and a _bully, _to boot! A no-good, hot-headed, humorless _Mick, _boss,_ that's _all he is!"

Felix flattened his brow in Gene's direction, silencing him with a disapproving stare.

"Reynolds . . . I don't tolerate that kind of language in this institution. I _will not _hear you referring to Mr. O'Reilly by that name again . . . understood?"

Gene's face blanched, his scowling expression quickly blanking.

"I . . . well, I just . . . I only _meant _that he - "

"Under_stood, _Reynolds?"

"Un . . . understood." He fidgeted sheepishly for a moment, then looked down at his shoes and shuffled back toward his table. "Uh . . . s-see you around, boss."

Felix watched him go, then breathed a long sigh and moved to sit down at the empty table his demolitions man had just vacated. With a worn, weary look, he turned to stare through the lunchroom windows at the cloudy midday sky and torrential downpour outside . . . but in his mind's eye, he was still seeing Ralph O'Reilly's angry, red face.

_It had been a little over seven __**years **__since his father, Felix Merrycab the First, had hired Ralph as head of the demolitions department for Niceland Construction . . . and almost __**six **__years since his father had passed away, leaving sole ownership and control of the business to him, and forcing Felix to abandon most of his hands-on work as chief of construction - which he had loved - in exchange_ _for the executive role of company President - which he had never wanted._

_Seven years, he had known and worked with Ralph O'Reilly . . . and in all that time, he felt as if he had never once been able to really get through to him. _

_Ralph was excellent at what he did, there was no question about that . . . he managed his virtually one-man department with total reliability, and his incredible Character skills made him more uniquely talented in demolitions work than anyone else Felix had ever met. He had saved the company untold operating expenses by being able to demolish entire buildings in days, using nothing more than his bare __**hands **__. . . If __**anyone **__in Arcadia City was a true Character through and through, it was him._

_And yet . . . as much as it stung him to admit it, even to himself . . . Felix couldn't deny the truth._

_In some ways, Gene Reynolds was __**right**__._

_O'Reilly __**was **__a bully. He was hot-headed. He got into scuffles, arguments, and even physical __**fights **__with the other employees, almost on a regular basis. He incessantly broke things . . . most often by accident, but sometimes on __**purpose **__during one of his fits of temper. If his particular job didn't keep him as isolated from the work of the others as much as it did, there was no way Felix would have been able to keep Ralph on at the company as long as he had . . . no matter __**how **__much Felix's father had believed in him . . ._

_. . . or __**why**__ . . ._

Felix sighed again, consciously having to reel his thoughts back from unproductive territory. He was beginning to fear, after all these years, that he had no other conclusion at which to arrive . . . no matter how kind he tried to be, no matter how many times he tried to get to know him or to make him open up, Ralph O'Reilly was simply one employee whom he would never be able to befriend.

And the more he thought about it, the more Felix found himself thinking . . . more often than he cared to admit . . . that in spite of all his talent and ability, even in spite of his tremendous value to the company . . . it was nothing short of an incredible mystery that his father had ever been so insistent about hiring Ralph at all.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

As he was reaching for the knob of his office door, something white on the fogged window plate caught Ralph's eye. He paused with his fingers on the handle, his bristling anger stilled for a split-second with curiosity . . . but only for a split-second.

The black letters painted on the glass plate of his door read _Ralph C. O'Reilly, Head of Demolitions. _In front of his name, someone had taped a piece of paper with _WRECK-IT _written across it in red ink.

As he looked at the paper, Ralph felt his hand squeezing slowly tighter and tighter around the doorknob until it let out a dangerous, metal _krick. _The anger searing behind his eyes so hotly that he almost couldn't see for a moment, he ripped the paper off the window and crumpled it into a ball, tossing it on the hallway floor as he wrenched open his door, stormed inside, and slammed it shut behind him so hard the frame trembled.

Once inside his office - his tiny, dingy, dimly-lit first-floor office with the single window that peeked out into the brick alleyway behind the Niceland building - Ralph looked down at the yellow pad of paper in his hand, twisted his face into a furious glare, and threw it as hard as he could against the wall. He tore off his hat and jacket and threw them as well, muttering obscenities to himself as he shuffled sideways around the perimeter of his desk - it filled nearly two-thirds of the room, leaving him just barely enough space to squeeze by on either side with his gut sucked in and his back to the wall - and finally collapsed into his chair.

All at once, the accumulated anger and impotence of the past seven years of his life seemed to come pressing down on his shoulders like a tangible burden. Ralph let out a long, frustrated exhale of weariness and suppressed rage as he shrugged out of his suspenders, rolled up the white sleeves of his work shirt and leaned forward on the desk, slumping down further and further until his forehead was resting on his blotter.

For a long, long moment, he stayed there . . . his eyes squeezed shut and his ears closed, but the dimness and silence of his shabby little office still not enough to drown out the sounds of laughter and mocking.

_Seven years . . . seven long years, sitting in the same little dump of an office, the same little dump of a job . . . the same little dump of a home . . . the same lonely, boring little dump of a __**life**__._

When Ralph finally dragged himself up onto his elbows and stared unseeingly forward, his head was bleary with memories and contemplation. His insides felt empty.

The next moment, almost without realizing what he was doing, he found himself suddenly opening a side drawer of his desk and rummaging inside it until he found a scrap of paper and a pencil . . . and the next moment, he found himself hunched over with the pencil in his hand, writing again . . . and the next moment after that, he found himself leaning back and holding the paper up to the dim light streaming through the window behind him to read what he had written.

'_Nov. 3, 1948._

_My name is Wreck-It Ralph. I'm a wrecker. I wreck things._

_My friend Zangief says he thinks keeping a journal will help me sort out my problems, so I'm giving it a try . . . and so far as I can see, I only have one problem I need to sort out._

_Me._

_I'm the problem. _

_I don't want to be the problem anymore.'_


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: **BLAAAAAAAAARGH. Sorry this update took so long, guys . . . you've all been super cool with all your feedback for this little baby so far, I really appreciate it. I'm going to try to get the next update posted faster than this one . . . but again, I'm not imposing any kind of set schedule for myself with it . . . so again, I'm really grateful with you guys for sticking with it! Hope you like this chapter!

**Disclaimer**: All copyrighted characters are the property of Disney.

_**Here's To You**_

_Chapter 2: Building Exposition_

_BUNK BUNK BUNK._

A brisk knock at Ralph's office door broke him suddenly out of the semi-conscious trance into which he had unknowingly slipped. He jerked with alarm, blinking as he looked up from the scrap of paper on his desk for the first time in hours and glanced at the clock. It was already quarter to five . . . the faint beam of sunlight struggling through his window had turned to a dim, lazy orange.

Ralph quickly turned on his desk lamp, wrestled his arms back into his suspenders, sat up straight and began hastily shuffling the papers in his inbox, trying to make it look as if he _hadn't _spent half of the workday doing absolutely nothing.

"Uhh . . . c-come IN," he said loudly toward his closed door, clearing his throat with a dusty cough.

The door cracked open, and in poked the meticulously coifed and bespectacled head of Deanna, Felix Merrycab's personal secretary. The moment her face was through the door, her nose crinkled in a distasteful sneer as if the interior of the office greeted her with a particularly unpleasant odor.

"Mr. Merrycab would like to see you," she reported in a flat, disinterested monotone. "In his office, before you leave for the day."

Ralph blinked, his lips parted in silent astonishment . . . but before he could find his voice to reply, Deanna had retreated back out and shut the door again.

- 0 - 0 - 0 - 0 -

Felix's office was on the top floor of the building, and one too many bad experiences with the elevator ( which had only 7-and a half-foot ceilings and a weight limit too low for comfort ) over the years had taught Ralph to avoid using it at all costs . . . and so it was that moments after he had received the startling news, he found himself trudging grimly up the twelve flights of stairs to the top floor with his head hung dismally below his shoulders, his apprehension increasing with every step.

_What could Felix possibly want to see him about, if not their incident in the lunchroom earlier that day? _

_This was it. It had to be. He had finally pushed his luck too far in this place, fouled up one time too many and now it was going to cost him his job. He knew it, he just __**knew **__it . . ._

_. . . what would he do if Felix fired him? _

_Where else could an uneducated person like him, with his problems - with his __**past**__ - ever hope to find work in this city again?_

By the time he finally reached the twelfth floor, the back of Ralph's neck was clammy with perspiration. He tiptoed his way down the polished, marble-floored hallway toward Felix's office like a guilty defendant inching toward the courtroom. Once outside door, he paused for a moment . . . removed his hat, wiped the back of his hand across his damp forehead, drew in a deep, nervous breath . . . and went inside, ducking to squeeze through the doorway.

Immediately inside the entrance was a small waiting room, with Deanna's reception desk against the left wall opposite one large window overlooking the alley. Deanna herself was already seated at her desk, having beaten him upstairs in the elevator, and was intently focused on shaping her fingernails with an emery board. The scowl she gave him upon entering made it clear that she had considered the task of delivering his summons in person thoroughly beneath her . . . but it couldn't be helped. Ralph's shabby little office had not been deemed worthy of an intercom.

Ralph stood there anxiously for a moment, waiting for Deanna to buzz him in first . . . but to his surprise, she only raised her highbrows meaningfully at him and jerked her head towards the office doors.

"Well? Go _on _already_. _He's expecting you," she muttered coldly.

Ralph swallowed thickly in response, his throat suddenly dry and uncomfortable. Unconsciously twisting his hat in his hands, he shuffled across the receiving room toward the large, stylishly engraved double doors separating them from Felix's private office. They were perhaps the only doors in the entire building through which he was able to fit comfortably without ducking or contorting himself . . . and yet, they were the only ones through which, at that moment, he was desperately wishing he did not have to go.

He hesitated for a second longer . . . then, struggling to school his features into a calm expression, Ralph let his breath out in one last shaky exhale, and pushed open the doors.

The instant he stepped across the threshold and his shoes squeaked noisily on the spotlessly clean floor, Felix looked up at him from the other side of the room with an abrupt, almost unnervingly pleasant smile.

"Hello again, brother!" he called, his voice echoing off the slick, cavernous walls as cheerfully as if Ralph were stopping by for a friendly cup of coffee, instead of an executive summons. He turned away from the floor-to-ceiling windows he had been gazing out of and moved to stand behind his desk, beckoning Ralph further into the room. "Thanks for running up on such short notice . . . come in, please, come in and make yourself comfortable!"

Ralph obediently lumbered forward, feeling morbidly conscious of himself and his own unkempt appearance as he went. He had been in this enormous office only once before - years earlier, when he had first been personally hired by the late Merrycab Sr. - but in all that time, he hadn't forgotten even one iota of its grand design and opulent furnishings, virtually unchanged since the passing of its former occupant. From the polished Terrazzo floor, to the varnished art deco furniture, to the Tiffany chandelier and the hand-finished crown moldings, every speck of decor in the office fairly reeked of prosperity and luxurious taste.

But it was Felix Merrycab himself - in spite of his size, his humble demeanor, and the mild southern flavor that still clung to his speech, a leftover from his childhood in Kentucky - who completed the ensemble as he sat down behind the broad plane of his executive's desk. Now wearing a crisp, clean new shirt, with his chestnut hair freshly combed, he was the perfect picture of class, good breeding, and business-like composure. Ralph couldn't help feeling like a raggedy peasant in comparison as he drew up to the desk, towering uncomfortably over it and its occupant.

"You . . . uh . . . y-you wanted to see me, sir?" he muttered in a sheepish, frog-like voice.

Felix nodded with an understanding smile. "I did. Please, sit down."

Ralph glanced over his shoulder at the pair of small, expensive-looking armchairs placed in front of the desk, and gave a hesitant grimace.

"I, uh . . . if it's all the same to you, sir, I . . . I'd really rather stand."

Felix looked perplexed for a moment, then swiftly arched his eyebrows in apologetic embarrassment as he caught on.

_"Oh! _Oh, of . . . of course, Ralph, I beg your pardon. Certainly, certainly . . . whatever makes you more comfortable." The diminutive president sat awkwardly at his desk a second longer, then briskly stood up again and moved back toward the window, as if trying to sympathize with his subordinate's difficulty. There was a moment of pregnant silence. Ralph swallowed dryly, then cleared his throat.

"I . . . I want to apologize for earlier, in the lunchroom, Fe - I mean, _sir," _he quickly amended himself, twisting his hat that much harder. "It . . . well . . . it was a bonehead move, I didn't mean to - "

Felix turned around sharply in astonishment, then cut him off. "Oh, no, please, Ralph . . . there's no need to apologize, it was an accident, of _course _it was. Really, there's no harm done. And please, Ralph . . . call me Felix. You've known me for seven years now, there's no need to keep up all that _sir _nonsense."

Ralph immediately felt the urge to say something sarcastic, but he forced it back down his throat and simply nodded instead. "Uh . . . s-sure . . . sure thing, uh . . . _Felix."_

His boss smiled appreciatively . . . but the smile quickly faded, replaced with a sudden twinge of melancholy. He sighed quietly, then turned and look back out of the twelfth-story window at the bustling sprawl of the downtown Arcadia City business district. The rain had finally stopped, and the city skyline was bathed in the warm, luxurious colors of early dusk.

"Ralph . . . " Felix began again slowly, wistfully. " . . . do you remember what things were like here, back when my father was still in charge of the company?"

Ralph blinked, stunned at the suddenness of the question. He stammered soundlessly for a few seconds, and before he could answer, Felix continued.

"Nobody called me _sir, _back then . . . back then, I was just another regular, workaday construction man. But it isn't only me who's changed . . . the _business _has changed. This _city _has changed. You'd think that things would have improved a little more than they have these past few years, since the end of all that trouble with the gangs . . . but now . . . it's almost as if we've gotten rid of the criminals, and somehow kept the crime. Business in this city has become _cutthroat _. . . companies cheating and defrauding each other, devouring one another just to stay alive. Every week, it seems like there are more and more headlines about embezzlement and scandal and disaster . . . and the Niceland Construction Company hasn't been immune. We may be tearing down buildings by the dozen, but contracts for commissioning _new _ones are growing farther and fewer in between, all the time. We just . . . " Felix paused for a moment and sighed again, looking back over his shoulder at his now thoroughly perplexed employee; " . . . we just aren't _building _like we used to, Ralph."

Ralph could do nothing but stare in wide-eyed silence. _What was happening? Why in the world was Felix telling __**him **__all of this?_

"But then . . . of course, nobody else ever _could _build the way my old dad did, back in the day. Do you remember, Ralph?"

Ralph froze, his lips parting and hovering open for a moment before he could muster up a dusty reply. "I . . . uh . . . w-well . . . I remember the _stories, _of course, but . . . but I, uh, I never actually . . . "

Felix smiled with half his mouth, and mercifully interceded. "Maybe it was too long before your time here, eh, brother?" He chuckled good naturedly, then abruptly turned and walked across the room toward the south wall of the office, where the wood paneling was interrupted in the center by an opulent, cut-marble fireplace. Felix pulled over a nearby step-ladder ( presumably left there for that precise purpose ) and climbed up until his short arms could reach above the mantelpiece, where he carefully took down a single gleaming object that had been mounted there on a walnut plaque. He climbed back down with the precious article cradled in both hands, then returned to his desk and held it out for Ralph to see.

"You recognize this, don't you?"

Ralph blinked. _Was this a joke? _Of course he recognized it . . . he had only seen it every day of his life for the past seven years, embroidered under the lettering of the Niceland company logo patch stitched onto his work jacket.

"It's . . . the Niceland _hammer_," he mumbled obviously, uncertain from Felix's tone whether the question was intended to be rhetorical or not.

"Not just the Niceland hammer, Ralph . . . _my father's_ _golden hammer. _The hammer that he made with his own hands, almost forty years ago when he moved North to start his own business . . . the hammer that he used to build this company up from nothing, the golden hammer that helped put Niceland Construction on the _map_. Do you know how it did that?"

Ralph hesitated again, not sure if Felix was asking him these things in some sort of jest, or if he legitimately thought he didn't know.

"Well . . . of course, everybody knows. It was some kind of _magic, _or something - he could use it to build just about anything in no time at all. If he had the raw materials, he could put together whole building sections just by hammering them."

Felix smiled knowingly, placing the golden tool down gingerly on the desk between them. "Correct . . . only, it wasn't _magic _that made the hammer so extraordinary. It was my father's own abilities - his Character skills - that made it what it was. I don't want to sound like I'm bragging to you, brother . . . but my father, he was one _heck_ of a Character. He had a super-human preternatural talent for making things, for imbuing raw material with his own living energy and vision . . . so much so, that when he made this hammer, he unknowingly transferred some of his own ability into it. And in return, it enhanced his building techniques so exponentially, that to many people it certainly _seemed _like magic . . . but it was really just an extension of his own natural powers."

Ralph listened silently to Felix's speech, hearing the tone of his voice grow distinctly more nostalgic and emotional the longer he reminisced about his father . . . when he finally paused for a moment and looked away, his smile strangely faded, Ralph shifted somewhat uncomfortably on his feet and managed to croak out, softly;

"I . . . remember your dad, Felix. He was . . . he was a good guy." Felix looked up, a spark of amusement suddenly quirking his features . . . noticing it, and realizing the next instant what he had unknowingly alluded to, Ralph hastily added, "No, ah . . . _no pun intended."_

Felix looked at him another moment, then closed his eyes and laughed out loud, rubbing the bridge of his nose with two fingers as he sank down into the leather chair behind his desk.

"Ha ha _haaaa _. . . that's good, brother. Dad sure would have gotten a kick out of that," he chuckled to himself a few seconds longer, then let out another sigh of recollection. "Oh, my _land . . . _it's been too long. Ralph . . . can I tell you a secret?"

Ralph froze, his fingers clenching uneasily tighter around his, by now, nearly mutilated hat.

"Uh . . . s-sure?"

Felix leaned forward in his chair and tilted his eyes up at Ralph's, pointing one vindictive finger down at the golden hammer lying on the desk between them.

"This hammer may have some remarkable properties, but it _isn't _magic. It doesn't work all the time, and it doesn't work for just _anyone. _This hammer is only as good as the man holding it. That's why things at this company have changed so much since my father's day, Ralph . . . it's because I'm not half the builder - not half the _man _- that he was. He left this hammer to me, in the hopes that as his son, I could use it to take his place . . . to carry on his work. But do you know what, Ralph? This hammer has never, not _once _in all these years, worked for me the way it did for him."

Ralph started, the inexplicably intimate turn that the conversation had taken almost bringing a tinge of color to his face. He had long since given up trying to figure out what Felix had called him up to his office for in the first place . . . he now only wanted to get away as soon as possible. He swallowed thickly, his mind racing to think of an escape tactic.

"That . . . uh . . . _wow, _that's . . . that's really a bum deal, sir . . . er, _Felix," _he stammered. "I'da never guessed it . . . I mean, not with you being such a great construction man . . . you know, _Fix-It Felix, _and all . . . "

Felix only sighed again, now staring wistfully off into the distance. "It's kind of you to say that, brother . . . but if there's something I've learned, it's that _fixing _and _building _are not the same thing. I may have been handy, may have known my way around a site well enough in my day, but . . . I'm afraid that when it comes right down to it, it's got nothing to do with that. Dad used to say that if somebody wanted it bad enough . . . no matter _who _they were, if they only had the right kind of _spirit _about them, the right kind of passion for the work . . . this hammer would help them. Well . . . either my ol' Dad was wrong about it, or else . . . I just haven't got what it takes, and that's that."

Felix trailed off, and for a long moment, the office was permeated by a roaring, stifling silence, broken only by the half-muted sounds of honking rush-hour traffic wafting up from twelve stories below. Ralph tried to glance discretely at the paperweight clock on the desk . . . it was almost half past five. _How much longer was Felix going to keep him here? What was the __**point **__of all this?_

Then, without warning, almost as if he were responding directly to Ralph's thoughts, Felix suddenly let out a brisk exhale and clapped his hands together, sitting up straight and visibly shrugging himself out of his contemplative malaise.

"But listen to me - sitting here talking your ear off, when it's already past quittin' time!" he said brightly and with a hint of apology, jumping to his feet and walking around the desk to address his bewildered demolitions man directly. "Ralph . . . the point I'm trying to get at with all of this, is that . . . I think I can _understand _some of your frustrations with this place. I want you to know that you're not alone. A few minor scuffles aside - you've been a faithful, reliable part of this company for many years now, and . . . I can't help but feel that it's time you got a little more _recognition _around here_."_

Ralph's heart skipped a beat, and he felt his eyes going wide with astonishment.

"You . . . you _mean it?" _he heard himself utter disbelievingly.

Felix laughed jovially and tried to clap him on the arm, but wasn't able to reach higher than the back of his knuckles. "Well of _course _I mean it, brother! It's why I called you up here . . . I wanted to give you the invitation in person!"

Ralph's slowly rising spirits suddenly deflated again.

"Invitation?" he echoed blankly.

"That's right, Ralph . . . the invitation to next week's milestone groundbreaking on the new apartment complex! You remember, don't you? On the corner of Fourth and Weston, where you knocked down the old drug-store last July? Well, the landowners have finally contracted us for a fifteen-story apartment building . . . this marks the company's 30th structure in Arcadia City, so there's going to be a bit of a ceremony, with the press, and the Mayor and all . . . And guess who's going to be up there with me - in front of the whole company, the whole _city_ - receiving a commendatory plaque for Most Outstanding Employee of the Decade?"

Ralph's jaw hovered soundlessly. He couldn't respond . . . he felt as if a stone the size of a cantaloupe had just dropped into his stomach.

"That's right . . . nobody else but _you, _brother!" Felix laughed, apparently mistaking Ralph's shocked, horrified silence for speechless excitement. "Not a word now, you've _earned _it! I'll have Deanna send a memo to your office with all the information . . . but don't forget, that's _this _coming Monday morning, the corner of Fourth and Weston, at nine o'clock _sharp. _And, er . . . don't worry about wearing anything special, your good old company jacket will do just fine! Let this city see what a real, honest working man looks like, eh?"

He chuckled again, and tried to elbow Ralph good-naturedly on the back of his hand . . . but Ralph was still unable to find his voice. He could do nothing but stare down at the grinning face of his boss with a blank, frozen expression of disbelief.

After another few seconds passed without any reply or sign of enthusiasm, Felix seemed to catch on a bit - but only a _bit _- to the galling awkwardness of the moment, and cleared his throat with a hearty cough as he took Ralph gingerly by the forearm and tried to steer him toward the door.

"Well!" he said brightly, with a pleasantness that had now lost a fair trace of its prior confidence; "Now, ah . . . now that that's settled, I'm sure you'll be wanting to get on home, brother. Maybe we'll see you in the lunchroom again tomorrow?" he added hopefully.

Ralph didn't answer. He allowed himself to be led across the room like a sheep, his eyes staring unseeing forward under a continually darkening brow until they reached the doors, and Felix pulled one of them open for him. "Well . . . aahh . . . g-goodnight, Ralph . . . take care!" the now nervously fidgeting President concluded with an unconvincing smile.

Ralph said nothing. He made one, fleeting instant of eye contact with Felix . . . just long enough to give him the faintest, almost imperceptible hint of a dumbfounded glare . . . and marched straight through the waiting room and out of the office without another word, half-slamming the door behind him loudly enough to make Deanna jump an inch in her chair and drop her emery board with a startled yelp.


End file.
